HOWTO - Alcatel Speedtouch 330 Modem

Jay Scott, jay@jayscott.co.uk

v0.03, April 8th 2004


This is a How-To on getting your Alcatel Speedtouch 330 Modem A.K.A."The Frog" working with the Linux distribution Slackware. This How-To has been tested by me on a few different versions of Slackware, the versions include 8.0, 8.1, 9.0 and 9.1.

1.0 Copyright

This document is Copyright 2004 by Jay Scott. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.

1.2 Disclaimer

Use the information in this document at your own risk. I disavow any potential liability for the contents of this document. Use of the concepts, examples, and/or other content of this document is entirely at your own risk.

All copyrights are owned by their owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.

You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before major installation and backups at regular intervals.

1.3 Credits

In this version I have the pleasure of acknowledging

webmaster (at) speedtouch.sourceforge.net

Any comments or suggestions can be mailed to my mail address at : jay@jayscott.co.uk


2. Pre-Install

The first thing you will need to do is get the drivers and other need files for setting up the modem for slackware. You will need to get the latest drivers for the speedtouch modem from http://speedtouch.sourceforget.net at the time of writing this the current drivers is the speedtouch-1.2-beta2.tar.gz file. I have also mirrored this file at my site in case future driver release do not work with this HOWTO, these can be found at www.jayscott.co.uk/docs/speedtouch.

You will now need to get the firmware for your modem you can either copy the file named alcaudsl.sys from your windows drivers and rename it to mgmt.o or you can also download the copy of mgmt.o I have used for this HOWTO by downloading it from www.jayscott.co.uk/docs/speedtouch.

NOTE : When I used the windows driver I had problems with the internet connection speed(slow) removing that driver and using the mgmt.o on my web site sorted the problem.

2.1 Installing Modem

I now assume that you have

1. Have the speedtouch drivers
2. Have the speedtouch firmware (mgmt.o)
3. Logged in as root
4. All files are in root's home directory.

You now need to extract the speedtouch drivers

tar -zxvf speedtouch-1.2-beta2.tar.gz

Now move into the new extracted directory and compile and install the modem drivers

 
  cd speedtouch-1.2-beta2
  ./configure
  make
  make install
 

Once the drivers have been compiled and install you need to now configure the modem.

2.2 Configure Modem

We need to copy the firmware into a suitable directory so we can call on it when needed.

cp /root/mgmt.o /etc/ppp

Now we have to edit the speedtouch.conf that is in the doc-linux directory to include the path to our firmware now sits. Move into the doc-linux directory within the extracted drivers folder and edit the file speedtouch.conf to include the following line.

MICROCODE="/etc/ppp/mgmt.o"

Now you need to configure the main file, this is were all the connection options such as login details is kept. You can copy and paste the following config file into you ppp directory

  # Begin File
  noauth
  noipdefault
  pty "/usr/local/sbin/pppoa3 -vpi 0 -vci 38"
  sync
  kdebug 1
  noaccomp
  nopcomp
  noccp
  novj
  holdoff 4
  maxfail 25
  persist
  usepeerdns
  defaultroute
  user "your.name@hg??.btinternet.com";
  # End File   
  

NOTE : You may have to change the line that is pointing to pppoa3 to where ever it was installed on your computer, you can type locate pppoa3 to find its correct path. You may need to change the VPI and VCI to the right numbers for your country, the numbers in that file are for the United Kingdom. You will also need to change the user to your login username.

You have to save this file into the directory /etc/ppp/peers and call it adsl.

The next step is to check that file chap-secrets in the /etc/ppp folder exists and is correct. If the file is wrong or not there copy the text below and save it in the /etc/ppp directory and name it chap-secrets.

 
  # Secrets for authentication using CHAP
  # client server secret IP addresses
  'your.name@hg??.btinternet.com' * 'password' *
  

Also Check the file options in the /etc/ppp folder and follow the same rules as the chap-secrets file.

 
  lock
  noipdefault
  persist
  noauth
  usepeerdns
  defaultroute
  

Now we need to set the resolve file to link to the ppp resolv file

ln -s /etc/ppp/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf

NOTE : If you get a message saying the file exists the first delete the file

rm /etc/resolv.conf

Then try the above command again.

2.3 Starting the Modem

To start the modem we need to upload the firmware, mgmt.o, to your modem by typing the following

/usr/local/sbin/modem_run -f /etc/ppp/mgmt.o -m

NOTE : Again the path to modem_run maybe wrong please change it to where ever it is on your computer

Then we call on the pppd daemon by running the following command

pppd call adsl

And that should be it! You can check by trying to ping a site such as linux.org and typing ifconfig ppp0. If you want to automatically start your internet connection when your computer is booting all you need to do is add the following lines into the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file.

 
  echo "Uploading modem firmware..." 
  /usr/local/sbin/modem_run -f /etc/ppp/mgmt.o -m
  echo "Starting pppd"
  pppd call adsl
  echo "Connected"

That should be you connected to the interweb.

If you have anything to add to this HOWTO or you need any help them please feel free to email me.